A Master's Mind
by Thessily Thessilonikki
Summary: I am obsessed with the possibility of any Jedi turning dark. This is a bit of Dark!Obi-Wan, a little series I'm working on. What really is in the Jedi Knight's mind? Pairings Anakin/Padme and Obi-Wan/Anakin (since I detest having to read to find them, I'l
1. A Master's Mind

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Ass Cover: They belong to Lucasfilm, and the Bearded One. I'm just borrowing them for a spell. Cuz I just finished one of these lovely little works, and I wonder why it's always Anakin lusting after Obi-Wan and never the other way around. So… yeah. Here I go. Be wary. I'm thinking about making it a series, actually. Obi-Wan's descent to the Dark Side because of his love for Anakin. Yeah. Sounds good to me.

A Master's Mind

"A Padawan need not know his master's mind."

As so often before, my Padawan gazed at the ground, properly chastised as the words left my lips, although I felt no better for it.

It certainly would not have been a good thing for this Padawan, who was no good at hiding his true feelings, to know his master's thoughts, his master, who was so good at concealing his true self.

No, I would never tell Anakin how I felt.

In truth, there is nothing that I don't know about my Padawan. Even before, I knew that he loved the former Queen of Naboo, down to his soul. I knew when he wedded her, I knew everything.

Anakin had never been good at holding back his emotions.

And for this reason, for his love of Senator Amidala, I never showed a thing.

When he was younger, thirteen or fourteen, he'd had a fleeting infatuation with me, as most Padawans do with their masters. On occasion, the masters develop a love for their Padawan that goes beyond simple training bonds. Always they get over it.

I, unfortunately, have not.

He is training with his lightsabre today, swinging it and spinning it and I'm trying to pretend that I am only watching him in the way the other Masters watch their Padawans.

I don't want this.

He loves, and that can be the downfall of a Jedi. I know this from my own experience.

I know that we have shared the same loss, he his mother, and I my master, both of them people very dear to us. We have known the same anger, the same pain. We have committed the same crimes.

The difference between my beloved Padawan and I is that I have returned to my chosen path, the path of a Jedi.

I feel the darkness within him, even through his happiness and his joy in his marriage to Senator Amidala. It is something that his love will never erase. It grows and it twists him, corrupting him, changing him.

I would give anything to take that away, to make him pure once again. If I thought for a moment that my love could do this, I would forsake everything that I live for, my own path of righteousness to turn him from the darkness.

If only a Jedi Knight in a situation like my own could speak his mind.


	2. A Master's Heart

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Ass Cover: They belong to Lucasfilm, and the Bearded One. I'm just borrowing them for a spell. Cuz I just finished one of these lovely little works, and I wonder why it's always Anakin lusting after Obi-Wan and never the other way around. So… yeah. Here I go. Be wary. Put this after A Master's Mind.

A Master's Heart

In my dreams, he is perfect. While I am awake, he is falling.

He is now, sitting beside me in this ship that carries us once again away from Coruscant, and farther still from Naboo, he is asleep. When he was a child, he dreamt of being among the stars, away from the sand and the heat that was his home world of Tatooine. From the moment my Master took him from that wasteland, he has hated space, hated being among the stars, hated the chill of the airless void.

I have developed a fear of him, something that holds a grip on my heart, an emotion that is second only to one other in my heart. I fear that, should his anger again rage out of control as it has before, time and again, I will lose him to the Dark Side.

"Padme," he says, whispering the name of his love as he sleeps. I wonder if ever in my sleep my unconsciousness has betrayed me, revealing my secrets. But then, Anakin's resolve has never been as strong as mine, and perhaps that is why he has begun to give in to the Dark.

I would show him what it is to feel the Dark Side invade you and still yet come back to the light. I would force him to turn away from it.

I would change to force him to.

I shock myself when I think this, knowing that I am fully willing to embrace the Dark Side simply to prevent my Padawan from doing so.

A Very un-Jedi thought, from one who upholds all that the Jedi Order is meant to be. But then, no other Jedi Knight has had to train a Padawan who has so much riding upon his fate. If he is in fact the Chosen One, as my master so believed he was, then he must not be allowed to turn to the Dark Side.

If by force I may have him, take him and change him, I will.

If that is what I need to do, the Dark Side's will be done.

"Anakin," I say, shaking him gently, waking him from sleep and peaceful dreams of his wife, and her home on Naboo. He doesn't like the climate of that planet either. He is never happy, with his living spaces, except in the Jedi Temple. Tatooine too hot and sandy and dry, and Naboo too wet. He opens his eyes and looks at me, and they're wide and blue and I remember that I love this young man.

"Yes, Master?" he asks, his voice soft and a bit hoarse from sleep.

"We are about to arrive, my Padawan. I want you awake and alert."

I chicken out at the last moment, when I could have told him everything, told him of my love for him and my desperation to keep him from his darkening path.

Someday, though, I will tell him. Soon, I will tell him. I will turn him from the Dark Side, even if it means losing myself.


	3. A Master's Soul

****

Ass Cover: They belong to Lucasfilm, and the Bearded One. I'm just borrowing them for a spell. Cuz I just finished one of these lovely little works, and I wonder why it's always Anakin lusting after Obi-Wan and never the other way around. So… yeah. Here I go. Be wary. Put this after A Master's Mind.

A Master's Soul

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My own voice echoed back to me as I told him. Laid bare my soul and let him know what I felt.

"Anakin, I love you."

A dreadful echo, and his face pale as the snow of the frozen planet. He doesn't believe that these words have escaped his master's lips, will not believe what his ears have surely heard. But deep inside him, where the Force is so strong, he knows the truth.

"You do not mean what you say, Master." Anakin tells me, and my heart is broken, my feelings laid waste. He does not believe me.

"I mean every word, beloved Padawan. And I tell you this now in hopes that there may be some way I can change you." I tell him. He frowns at the endearment and scowls at the rest.

"There is nothing about me that needs changing," he snaps.

"There is a great darkness within you, Anakin." I tell him. I can feel it building as he grows more and more angry with every one of my words.

"You know nothing. You are not yet a Master, who are you to make pronouncements such as that. Darkness indeed."

"I have been there, Anakin! I know!" I cry, and still, he does not believe me.

"Your master never fell in love with you. You are not married, you know nothing!" He is almost screaming now, and I feel anger—an emotion I have repressed for so long, building inside me.

"I have touched the Dark Side, Anakin. I know what you did when your mother died. I know about the Tuskens. I did the same when my Master died. I took a life out of vengance. But I turned away from that, Anakin, as you well could."

"I have done nothing since," He says, and he does not know that I know the truth.

"Lies are a tool of the Sith. I know you know this. You become more and more like them. Hateful, deceitful."

"You know nothing of what I feel." Anakin says, and he turns away. My anger is overflowing, taking me away from the peace I have known as a Jedi Knight.

"You will listen to me, Anakin Skywalker." I say, and I am furious, in a way such as I have not been since the Sith blade stabbed into my Master's body. "I have known the darkness, and I want you to turn from it. If you will not do so willingly, I will force you to. I will make certain that you will NEVER use the power of the dark side again, even if it means that I have to kill you."

My Padawan's eyes widen, and he does not speak. He is shocked into silence.

"The fate of the galaxy rests too much upon you for me to allow you to change. It would tear apart everything the Jedi Order has worked for, everything that your Padme has tried for so long to gain," and once I have started, I cannot stop. "You would kill her, you would kill your own children, Anakin."

"Master—"

"Leave, Anakin," I snap.

He does not. I reach out and grip his shoulders, and pull him hard into a kiss, forcing it upon him. I love him desperately, and I forever will.

Even as he shoves me from him, I still love him. As he leaves, my soul burns for him. As he returns to his beautiful wife and the children she will bear, children that I hope someday he will know, children he will only know if he turns away from the Dark Side.

But now I know that is something I cannot do. I must embrace it completely to stop him.

I can think of no other way.


	4. A Master's Secret

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Ass Cover: They belong to Lucasfilm, and the Bearded One. I'm just borrowing them for a spell. Cuz I just finished one of these lovely little works, and I wonder why it's always Anakin lusting after Obi-Wan and never the other way around. So… yeah. Here I go. Be wary. Put this after A Master's Soul.

A Master's Secret

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The last conversation I had with him as echoed through my mind for years. When he killed my wife, I remembered him saying I would have caused her death myself.

I understand now why he did it.

My master after him, the one that saw me to my knighthood, the one he killed, told me that he screamed when I severed the training bond between us. That it was truly part of what pushed him over the edge.

Master Windu was never one to spare my feelings with his words.

But even as my former master took lives and became a Sith, I turned from the Dark Side. I became the Jedi Master that he could have been, had he not given up his path.

For me. Because he loved me.

It hurts to think it, to know the pain that I must have caused him, because I feel the same pain every time I remember Padme being taken from me. I loved her so much…

The least I can do is see my children to their knighthood and then to their mastery.

He is ripping apart the Republic, along with Count Dooku and their master, Lord Sidious. It took us so long to discover who the leader was… and it was a shock. Then-Chancellor Palpatine had been a mentor to me throughout the beginning of the Clone War. I couldn't believe that he was the one tearing apart the peace that he, along with Padme, had worked to have.

I remember every word, every syllable of the conversation that we had the night he turned, and the last one, the one we had the day he killed Padme. He forced me to watch her die.

And now he has my daughter.

My Padawan races along beside me as we hurry through the corridors of the ship, searching him out, trying to stop my former master before he takes the life of my daughter as he did the life of my love. I can sense him, feel him as we draw nearer and nearer. I understand what he meant when he said he knew the Dark Side and could feel it within me. I feel it much more acutely now that I have turned from it.

Luke is out of breath already. We have set quite a pace racing through this ship. "Father," he says, "do we HAVE to go so fast?"

"Would you rather stop and rest and have your sister die or would you like to run and get to her before he takes her life?" I ask him. He pales noticeably.

"Sorry, Father," he says. I hear Leia yelling not so far down the corridor. I can feel her in the Force.

"Daddy!" She cries as Luke and I skid to a stop and turn into the room. It startles me to see my former master standing there with my daughter, red lightsabre in his hand. He looks no different, despite fifteen years.

"Ahh, my lovely Padawan," the man that was once Obi-Wan Kenobi says, a roguish smile crossing his lips. "I wondered when you would arrive."

Leia's mouth drops open and she stares at me, flicks her eyes to her twin, then back.

"Padawan?" Luke blurts.

"Oh, I suppose they don't teach that in the temple now, do they Padawan?" He says the word in a way that is so far from the endearment that it once was. "No, they teach about the lost Jedi, but they would never speak anything but the name. They would never admit that Obi-Wan Kenobi was once the master of Anakin Skywalker."

It was a secret that I had never meant to tell. After he killed Padme, I vowed never to allow Luke and Leia to know that he was once my master. His murder of Master Windu finalized this decision, and it was a rule throughout the temple and the Order that his name would never be spoken in connection with my own.

And now my children knew that their father's master had killed their mother.


	5. A Master's Strength

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Ass Cover: They belong to Lucasfilm, and the Bearded One. I'm just borrowing them for a spell. Cuz I just finished one of these lovely little works, and I wonder why it's always Anakin lusting after Obi-Wan and never the other way around. So… yeah. Here I go. Be wary. Put this after A Master's Secret.

A Master's Strength

"He's lying," Luke says. He's a stubborn child, I've noticed. I think he may have gotten it from his mother.

"No," I say, and it hurts me to tell him this, to tell Leia this, "he's telling the truth. When I was nine, he took me as his Padawan. He turned to the Dark Side to keep me from it."

And this, too, is shocking to them. Anakin Skywalker, a master on the council of Jedi, and their father, as well as Luke's Jedi master, was on the path to the Dark Side once?

"When his mother died," Obi-Wan says. "But enough of this talk. Which of them would you rather I kill first, dearest Ani? Pretty little Leia here, knowing that there's no way she's been trained enough to take me on, or Luke? He probably cant' do it either, though. They're only fifteen, after all, and barely that. I'm proud of you, love, they're beautiful."

"Their mother was beautiful," I try to keep my voice neutral. "And you took her life too."

"Yes, I did," Obi-Wan says, more or less off-handedly. "It would be nothing to take theirs as well."

I take a deep breath, and I know that I have to do what he once did—on a different level.

"Take mine instead," I tell him. I do not know what the outcome of this battle will be—I am stronger in the Force, true, but he is on the side of the Dark.

"Oh, how sweet," Obi-Wan says. "If only I could have had children… on second thought, you only do because you had the rules in the order changed because your new" he sneered the word out, the most hateful sound I'd heard in my lifetime, and I'd been a slave, "master was the head of the council. Aren't you special?"

"This is between you and I, not my children, and not my Master." I say.

Obi-Wan—I have to remember that he isn't really the man that he once was—shoves Leia away from him and she puts her hands out to stop her descent to the floor. Luke runs to help her to her feet, and I draw my lightsabre.

The battle is furious, lightsabre clashing with lightsabre in a flurry of blue and red, much the way it was when Master Yoda fought against Count Dooku. Except then, when I was lying on the ground, one arm lost to the Sith Lord, my head on Obi-Wan's legs, I thought myself better than Master Yoda.

Since then I have learned that I could never compare with him, even though I am far stronger in the force, I do not have the years that he has had to learn the patience and calm that he has.

But I am stronger than Obi-Wan, in ways that I never was as his Padawan.

Obi-Wan's lightsabre flies from his hand and he stares at me. "Well done, Padawan mine," he says. "But you will have to kill me. I will never return to the Jedi Order."

"Murder is the path of the dark side." I say.

"They will not have me even if you could change me," he tells me.

"I will not take your life," I cry.

"You have to!" Obi-Wan screams. The man who had been my master shines through so brightly at this moment, I realize he had been there all along, just taking a back seat to the Sith Lord he had become.

I raise my lightsabre. He is sacrificing himself once again.

"I'm sorry, Master," I say, and I bring my 'sabre down.


	6. A Master's Forgiveness

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Ass Cover: They belong to Lucasfilm, and the Bearded One. I'm just borrowing them for a spell. Cuz I just finished one of these lovely little works, and I wonder why it's always Anakin lusting after Obi-Wan and never the other way around. So… yeah. Here I go. Be wary. Put this after A Master's Secret.

A Master's Forgiveness

"I love you Anakin."

I am crying, my tears dropping onto his cheeks even as he speaks and his body grows cold in my arms.

I have taken his life twice now, once when he gave it to save me from the growing darkness, and now I have physically taken it to save us all.

"Anakin," he whispers, his hands gripping my own as best they can. I am aware of my children staring at us. "I'm sorry."

"I didn't want to, Master," I tell him. A tear slides down the side of his face.

"I loved you so much, and I…" his voice falters and he gasps for breath. His eyes remain on mine. "I'm sorry," he repeats. "I love…"

He does not get to finish that sentence, but it does not matter. I hug his body tightly to mine, my cheek against his cooling one. I cannot stop crying, though this is the man who took the life of my wife and my Master.

"Father, we have to leave," Luke says, helping Leia to her feet. She looks at me with total disgust. I understand that—her father is kneeling on the ground crying over a man who meant to kill her and her brother, and who DID kill her mother. I understand her, yes, but she could never understand me.

Through the force, I know that the Republic will be rebuilt. I can feel it.

I get to my feet and lift Obi-Wan up into my arms. I toss his lightsabre aside—he does not need it, and I do not want it.

"You should leave him," Luke says. "He is a Sith."

This angers me. "He was my master once. He saved me from the Dark Side, as I, in turn, have redeemed his soul. I do not expect you to understand that, but I will not leave him here."

"You should."

"Luke, I will not. He will have a pyre, as all Jedi who die, as his master did before him."

"Master Windu had no pyre." Luke says. He really is a sensible boy, but, like his sister, he does not understand.

"Master Windu was absorbed into the force. He left no body." I tell him. I know that this happened before he could remember. The things they teach in the temple classrooms…

I carried Obi-Wan with me back to our ship. I took him back to the temple, the place that had been his home before he had forsaken the Jedi order.

He deserved to be given the funeral of the Jedi. In the end, he was a Jedi, sacrificing himself for the good of the Republic, even though he had worked so to destroy it for so long.

One thing that was often neglected in temple teachings was forgiveness. I was not raised in the temple, but on a desert world in the outer rim. My mother taught me forgiveness.

And it is forgiveness that Obi-Wan deserved.


	7. A Master's Love

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Ass Cover: They belong to Lucasfilm, and the Bearded One. I'm just borrowing them for a spell. Cuz I just finished one of these lovely little works, and I wonder why it's always Anakin lusting after Obi-Wan and never the other way around. So… yeah. Here I go. Be wary. Put this after A Master's Forgiveness. This is the end, obviously.

A Master's Love

If I could cry, I would.

I don't have that ability anymore, here, as a part of the Force. I can only stand here and watch my former Padawan sob as my mortal body burns.

I love him. I always have, and I will until the day that he stands beside me in this greater power. Stands here with myself and my master, and Anakin's master after me.

"Master, does he have the ability to turn away from the Darkness I have caused him by asking him to take my life?" I ask, and Qui-Gon lays a hand on my shoulder.

"He is strong, Padawan, he will overcome." My master tells me. I do not know if he says it because it is truth or if he says it because he wishes to spare my feelings.

I am silent as I watch Anakin, and they leave me.

After all I've done, he still did this for me. I do not think, if I were in his position, I could have forgiven what I did to him.

"I love you, my Padawan." I say aloud. He turns abruptly and it is as though he can see me.

"I know, Master." He says, his voice soft and almost lost in the roar of the flames. No one wants to be there with him as my body burns. None have the forgiveness that is embedded so deeply in his heart.

"I never wanted anything to be like this. If there had been another way, be assured I would have taken it," I say. I know now that he can hear me, he can see me, as though I am really there. I reach out, but my hand passes through him. His face is tear streaked, and I wonder if, after all the pain I have caused, I am worth those tears.

"I understand, Master. I didn't when it first happened, but now I do." Anakin says.

"You have become the ideal Jedi, Anakin. I am proud, as are my master and Master Windu," I tell him. I don't want him to cry. More than anything, I want him to stop.

"You were always the Jedi ideal, Master," he says.

"I chose the dark, Anakin. I could never be that."

"You were selfless. You chose the path that would save another. You didn't have to ask me to take your life. Before and at the end you were what a Jedi should be."

I nod. "I love you Anakin," I tell him.

"I know, Master." He says. "You were the only father I had."

"You are a father yourself now. Raise your children to be as strong and as compassionate and forgiving as you."

"I will, Master."

The flames began to die and he turned from me, watching the last sparks and my ashes floating on the breeze.


End file.
